What’s at Stake in The US-Israel War on Iran?
Remaking the Middle East will come at a cost
By: Salman Rafi Sheikh
When a girls’ school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was struck yesterday, apparently accidentally, on the opening day of the latest phase of hostilities between the United States, Israel, and Iran, killing dozens of children, the world saw more than a tragic act of wartime collateral damage. What was hit was not a military target, but a civilian institution. It is nonetheless emblematic of a deeper and far more dangerous logic unfolding in this conflict: a campaign that goes beyond forcing regime change, toward destroying Iran’s political, military and societal capacity to challenge or threaten the United States or Israel ever again.
What the US wants
This war is not merely about removing a government from Tehran and remaking the state. For Washington and Jerusalem, the imperative appears to be ensuring that Iran, as a geopolitical and strategic entity, never rises again as a competitor or challenger. This logic extends far beyond the conventional goal of regime change into what is effectively a strategy of total societal destruction.
Why is this necessary? Even if the regime can be toppled, there is no guarantee that a new regime, even if not ‘Islamist’ or ‘revolutionary, would necessarily be pro-US and pro-Israel. How can it be ensured that Iran never becomes a threat? The US and Israel seem keen to punish Iranian society, forcing it into a situation where it has no other option but to struggle for its survival.
With tragic clarity, such an objective vis-à-vis Iran closely mirrors Israeli strategy—fully backed by the US—in Palestine. Israel targeted, indiscriminately, everything in Palestine: schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, children, women, and unarmed civilians of all kinds. The target was not just Hamas. It was the Palestinian people and society. It is not a coincidence that the larger number of those killed were children. Israel forced the Palestinian society into a severe generational crisis.
Keeping this in mind, Trump’s announcement that “bombs will be dropping everywhere in Iran” reveals a similar pattern of obliteration. But Palestinian society is merely 6 million people as compared with the 93 million Iranians. The latter is a far more complex, larger, and proud society with deep historical roots. Can these objective factors be undone through massive bombing campaigns?
Disaster in Afghanistan
The US and its allies tried this model in Afghanistan in recent history. They spent more than US$2 trillion over two decades only to bring, ironically, the same group/regime back to power that the NATO alliance had sought to overthrow when it began its campaign in 2001.
The war in Afghanistan was still fairly contained. Although it extended to Pakistan, the war in Iran will extend far beyond Iran’s borders. For one thing, Tehran understands the nature of US-Israeli objectives. Its pattern of retaliation shows this understanding rather unambiguously. Without wasting any time, Tehran decided to launch missile strikes on almost all Gulf states. Latest reports show Dubai and Abu Dhabi under attack. If the regime is to survive, it appears to be ready to match the indiscriminate bombing of its people and military and political leadership and infrastructure with an equally indiscriminate bombing of Gulf states and their shiny capitals. Tehran is ready to inflict maximum pain, a tactic that it must have decided to adopt long before today’s attacks.
But the scope of this pain will not remain confined to the Gulf region. Latest reports show that Tehran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, not a mere symbolic gesture. It is a strategic lever with global consequences: roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and massive volumes of liquefied natural gas pass through this narrow chokepoint. By signaling that no vessel will be allowed safe passage, Iran is demonstrating both its capacity and willingness to escalate the conflict far beyond its borders.
This is a message to Washington, Jerusalem, and the global market alike: any attack on Iran will not remain contained within its territory. The economic shockwaves of a blocked Strait would be felt worldwide, amplifying the stakes and underscoring the extraordinary risks of pursuing a campaign aimed at societal annihilation rather than mere regime change.
The Middle East Remade
Meanwhile, the US and Israel appear prepared for a much longer and more expansive conflict than that in 2025. For both powers, at stake is not just Iran’s leadership or nuclear capability, but the future geopolitical architecture of the entire Middle East. Since the Abraham Accords — which began normalizing relations between Israel and several Gulf/Arab states — the stated aim of Washington and Jerusalem was to reshape the region along lines that would establish enduring Israeli hegemony.
Yet this vision has been repeatedly undermined. The resistance by Iran-aligned groups such as Hamas, particularly during the October 7 attacks, exposed deep fractures in any narrative of normalization. The subsequent Israeli war on Palestine demonstrated that peace cannot be sewn on the foundation of unchecked state violence without addressing core political grievances.
Even previously reluctant states like Saudi Arabia, long courted for normalization with Israel, have been forced to recalibrate their stance. The idea of a regional order anchored in unconditional alignment with Washington and Jerusalem faltered amid widespread regional and global expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian cause and broader regional public opinion. It ultimately pushed US and Israeli strategists toward a more radical option: eradicating Iran’s geopolitical influence altogether, thereby compelling reluctant Gulf states into acquiescence.
The war on Iran thus cannot be viewed in isolation. It began long ago and reached a critical phase when Israel and the US obliterated Iranian influence in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen to a large extent. The war is part of a broader strategic ambition to remake the Middle East’s political landscape, not merely in terms of governments in Tehran or Riyadh, but of alliances, energy flows, and global power competition. Were Iran’s capacity to influence region wholly dismantled, Gulf states might find themselves compelled into closer alignment with US–Israeli security frameworks, reshaping regional politics and containing the influence of rival powers such as China and Russia. (Once remade in this way, the US can safely focus more on China in the Indo-Pacific region.)
This would represent not just a military conquest but an ideological one – the subjugation of an entire regional order in favor of a hegemonic configuration centered on US-Israeli interests. But the logic of annihilation has a cost. In Afghanistan, replacing one regime with another didn’t create stability, it undermined it. In Iraq and Libya, dismantling existing structures without building equitable governance produced vacuums that empowered extremist factions. If the aim in Iran is comprehensive destruction of state and society, the consequences are likely to be far worse than the US or its allies appear to have imagined.
If Iran falls, the consequences will almost certainly radiate throughout the Gulf region, exacerbating sectarian fault lines that are already fragile. Sunni-Shia divides, long manipulated by both local and external actors, would likely intensify, creating fertile ground for unrest in countries that the US and Israel currently view as strategic partners. Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE, could find themselves fighting internal and external battles for survival.
Far from consolidating the “new” Middle East that Washington and Jerusalem envision, the collapse of Iran could instead destabilize these states, undermining the very alliances the US and Israel hope to leverage for regional hegemony. In short, the intended outcome — secure, compliant partners under US-Israeli influence — could transform into a region-wide crisis, where sectarian conflict becomes both a political weapon and a strategic liability.
Dr. Salman Rafi Sheikh is Asia Sentinel’s diplomatic correspondent.
[1] If as claimed by imbeciles like Netanyahu and Trump, whom he has wrapped around his middle finger, that Khamenei has been killed -- rejoice. I've always believed every mad mullah and the blood-soaked Islamic religious extremism these maggots peddle should be exterminated. They're a curse, not dissimilar to corrupt rogues and autocrats like Trump and Netanyahu.
[2] I agree that this "war" isn't really about freeing oppressed Iranians from a the bloody-minded mad mullahs. It is an ideological war. But "subjugation" is the wrong word to use here. In fact, it was the repressive Middle Eastern dictators -- these corrupt, grubby, murderous louts -- who pranced into the White House to kiss Trump's ass, as well as opened the channels to Tel Aviv for "normalizing" relations with that anti-Palestinian rightwing, ultra-Jewish terrorist state.
[3] It's debatable whether the world order has shifted so fundamentally that these repressive Arab/Muslim states figured they needed to 'fit into' interstices of what had changed in terms of world order politics. Since the Americans fled from Iraq and Afghanistan with their tails between their legs, just as they did from Vietnam, there has been a view that American interests in the Middle East had been waning, fearing that -- with the exception of oil -- US foreign policy would pivot from the region just as East and Southeast Asian thought the same of American military presence in Asia. Even India and Pakistan thought the same.
[4] They were wrong. They read the wrong tea-leaves -- or opium leaves. What has changed within the region is Israel's enhanced power play but also the increased power plays between rival states among the Arab states for expanding their spheres of influence. Then came Trump and he smelled Arab money. Lots of it. Most siphoned by Arab heads of state and their cronies.
[5] The rest is still to be played out. This is not a Huntington or a Fukuyama moment for the Americans. It's anything but ...